The APIB gateway has two principal characteristics setting it apart from
most other CGI applications:

It serves a group of individuals developing,
maintaining, and implementing an international standard, namely STEP.
This is noteworthy because standards developers traditionally have had
very little software support besides generic tools such as word
processors and electronic mail.

Its data is represented in SGML, and users can
issue queries referring to structures defined in its DTDs. Because
the STEP DTDs are highly detailed, the APIB gateway supports a rich variety
of structured queries and hypertext linking.

Two other CGI applications sharing some of the
APIB gateway's characteristics are the National Standards Systems
Network (NSSN)[LASK] and a gateway for
accessing humanities texts[PWIL] from
university libraries. Another related project is the Digital Library
Initiative at the University of Illinois[SCHATZ].